Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
After wandering in our desert for nigh unto a
decade, my understanding of the challenge we face has distilled in the heat of
our sun. It has been a purgation as all sorts of ideas, feelings, and attitudes
have been burned away.
The question I ask now may not be of
immediate or obvious interest to you. I tie my mind in knots over how to be the
Church. You are struggling with your daily lives of family, work, relationships,
finances, and all the stuff that makes up a life. What I am struggling with
matters to you only if two things are true:
1 1. The key to
living any aspect of our life is the Christian faith that defines the meaning
of everything we do. Religion is not a category apart from our other activities.
It is the core of all of them.
2. 2. Christianity is a team sport. We are shaped Christoform through our participation in the
Body of Christ, the Church. Individualistic me-&-Jesus spirituality is a
modern – mostly American – invention. It is not the faith of the New Testament
or centuries of Christian tradition. To Jesus and the apostles, this faith can
only be practiced together.
If either of those points is false, there is
no need to read further. But, if they both might be true, then this could be
important.
I have prayed for the Diocese of Nevada daily
for so many years now. At first I prayed for specific things until I came to
believe we needed absolutely everything. So, I prayed “God we need it all. We
need more people, more leadership, more vision, more passion, more money, more
buildings. We need it all. We’ll take anything you’ve got to offer.” And I
prayed it with a desperation worthy of the psalmist.
While I prayed, I offered and promoted
programs and assistance in various kinds of ministry. Most failed. Occasionally,
some met with moderate success. One of them has made significant in-roads for
some congregations. But we still live on the edge, just getting by. Why is
that?
Two things have slapped me awake this year. They
have been happening all along. But they finally came together to bring me to the
ground zero of being the Church in Nevada. They have brought me on my knees to Mark
10: 17-21 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10%3A17-21&version=NIV
and Luke 10: 38-42 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A+38-42&version=NIV.
You may do well to read those texts before going on so you’ll know where we’re
headed.
The first wake up point was seeing how we
treat each other in our congregations. In those congregations that are
declining, the reason is plain as the nose on one’s face: People behave
deplorably toward one another. Insults fly. Plots thicken. Ultimatums are
thrown down. “If you don’t do x, I’m leaving.” The issues are usually of near comic
insignificance, but the passion invested is over “getting my way.”
But if you
bite and devour one another, watch out or you will be destroyed by one another.
– Galatians 5: 15
It is no wonder contentious groups do not
attract or retain people. Self-preservation dictates keeping our distance.
Such conduct is human nature as far as group
behavior is concerned. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion wrote about it in Experiences In Groups. We use
fight-flight to self-sabotage and defeat our real mission, the actual point
that brought us together. I do not judge or condemn. It is merely human
behavior. But that doesn’t make it Christian. The entire thrust of the New
Testament is that we are not bound to merely human behavior. For those of us
who are “in Christ,” it is possible to be an entirely different kind of community
-- a community that heals, empowers, and sanctifies us, transforming us from
glory unto glory into the likeness of Our Savior.
Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold the new has come. – 2 Corinthians
5: 17
We are “in Christ” if we are in the Body of
Christ, the Church, if we are baptized. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to
live in the way prescribed by the New Testament and not remain enslaved to the
world’s ways so well analyzed by Wilfred Bion. The Hymn to Love in 1
Corinthians 13 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13&version=NIV
is not about marriage but how to be the
Church. The Epistles are all about the art of community.
Yet even our congregations that are doing
well on the institutional vitality scale are riven by people treating each
other in sub-Christian ways. Nor is this limited to congregations. I sometimes see
our Diocese acting hurtfully, judgmentally, unkindly, shackled by pharisaic law
rather than flying free in the Spirit of love with joyful expectation for the Kingdom
Mission.
In a word, we are not behaving like
Christians. Naturally, we welcome people who are not spiritually mature so
there are bound to be incidents we regret. But I am saying something more
fundamental. Our norms of behavior are not Christian. Why would that be? That question
leads to the second wake up call.
I have heard from several of our leaders and leadership
groups, sometimes reporting what they hear from congregations, about what we as
a Diocese care about, what deep down matters to us. I hear that our congregations
just want a building and a priest. Some value the camp’s enjoyment of wholesome
outdoor activities. Some value charitable activities which could well be tied
to the gospel, but I have not heard them tied to the gospel and they are the
same charitable activities secular groups offer.
What I hear about our mission is not at all
bad. It sounds as if we are lonely and want to connect with each other as
friends. Some of us want to do a bit of worthy community service. There is
nothing wrong with that. Indeed, it is good. If a secular service club named
these priorities, I’d say that’s just fine. But what rocks me is that I have
heard literally nothing – not virtually nothing, literally nothing -- about the
Christian faith. I get the sense that we are serving a secular cake with
Christian sprinkles. If that’s all we’re doing, I would still vote for it but I
wouldn’t campaign for it or contribute to support the cause. When I notice that
about myself, the reason most of our congregations cannot mount stewardship
campaigns or engage in evangelism suddenly becomes obvious.
I feel that all the technical fixes for the
Church have finally been distilled away. We need one thing – except it is not a
thing – it is a person: Jesus.
When the rich young man came to Jesus seeking
eternal life, Jesus gave him the to-do list of his time and place. We have our
to-do list of Church projects and some of us do them. But when the young man
said he had checked all the boxes, Jesus replied, “You lack one thing.” He told
him to sell all he had. But that is not the “one thing.” That is just clearing
the path of his many things so he can choose the one thing. “Come, follow me.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o469PRLdbHU
Martha of Bethany had her to-do list. She was
bustling about the house like priest and altar guild on Sunday morning while
Mary sat at the feet of the Master. When Martha demanded that Jesus shoo Mary
away, Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are . . . upset about many things. Few things
are needed – indeed, only one. Mary has chosen the better part.” Mary chose a
relationship with Jesus.
Here’s what I believe. There are scores of congregational
development programs that would, in principle, help us do a better job of
Church. There are behavioral covenant models that, in principle, would lead to
us treating each other more civilly. There are stewardship methods that would
raise more money and evangelism programs that would swell our ranks – all in
principle. But there’s a problem. They are like a manual on better farming
practices. Back in the 40s, a young man was trying to sell an old farmer a
manual on farming but the old farmer replied, “Son, I’m not farming half as
good as I know how, as it is.”
Our challenge isn’t knowing churchmanship. It’s
knowing Jesus. It’s deciding to follow him heart and soul, not just as
individuals but as a community. It would mean living for the Kingdom Mission because
that’s the only thing that makes our lives count. If we fall in love with Our
Savior and follow where he leads we will, as the song says, “never be the same.”
Then and only then will all the programs make a whit of difference.